Tag Archives: Association of Professional Flight Attendants

Post navigation

Here are our latest updates on what’s happening with American Airlines and its contracts with its pilots and flight attendants. We’re afraid we have conclusions on neither.

First, the flight attendants.

AA chairman and CEO Doug Parker, president Scott Kirby and executive vice president Steve Johnson met Thursday morning with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants board of directors.

As of 4 p.m., the union has not issued a press release or hotline saying that American will give flight attendants the full $193 million in annual contract value that was in a rejected tentative agreement. It had a hotline earlier this week indicated Parker’s willingness to do so.

We have not heard that Parker said no on Thursday. But there would seem some holdup or some details that have to be ironed out before AA and APFA would nail down a deal.

For that matter, the union hasn’t said that AA said it wouldn’t give flight attendants the full $193 million, either. We just have no information.

Last Saturday, an arbitration board issued a binding decision that set the new contract’s value at $112 million.

Second, the pilots.

On Wednesday, the Allied Pilots Association sent a “comprehensive counterproposal” to American Airlines management, and APA president Keith Wilson led a delegation over to executive offices Wednesday afternoon to present and explain the union’s offer.

We’re awaiting American’s public response. In a mid-afternoon Thursday hotline update to members, APA said that “management agreed to meet with our negotiating team to discuss the specifics of what the union has proposed. These meetings are scheduled for tomorrow [Friday].”

As we noted in a late Wednesday item, the union’s board of directors gave American Airlines a choice of three different ways to increase pilot pay. We’ve heard the additional cost is several hundred million dollars a year, but we haven’t heard that officially.

These proceedings are part of the process to put the pilots of US Airways and American under the same APA contract and to put the flight attendants of US Airways and American under the same APFA contract.

The Allied Pilots Association gave American Airlines management a new contract proposal Wednesday in response to the carrier’s November contract proposal.

“In an effort to conclude the joint collective bargaining agreement negotiations, the APA board of directors has approved the presentation of a comprehensive counterproposal to management,” the union’s negotiating committee said in a message Wednesday to members.

“APA President CA Keith Wilson, Negotiating Committee Chairman CA Norm Miller and committee member FO Brian Smith met with American Airlines President Scott Kirby to make the presentation late this afternoon,” the message said.

The carrier and union had an Oct. 15 deadline to come to terms on a new joint contract that would put both American and US Airways pilots under the same contract.

They’ve extended the deadline several times. The company has the option of calling the negotiations to a halt and invoke an agreement to send the contract dispute to binding arbitration. The earliest that arbitration could begin would be early March.

“In our proposal, we identify several select items of improvement to achieve the industry standard in those areas while remaining generally consistent with the framework of management’s most recent proposal,” the committee said. “We provide creative options to ensure that our compensation does not trail our large network competitors, today and in the long term.”

The proposal outlines three different options for how American Airlines could give its pilots bigger pay raises, and outlines other changes it wanted.

The union message said that the proposal “is designed to conclude JCBA [joint collective bargaining agreement] negotiations promptly, ensure a fully engaged pilot force and move ahead with building the world’s best airline.”

American’s flight attendants voted down a tentative agreement in November. An arbitration board Saturday issued its binding decision to establish the joint contract covering AA and US Airways flight attendants.

AA chairman and CEO Doug Parker is scheduled to meet Thursday with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, and APFA said he’s willing to discuss giving flight attendants the extra $81 million in annual contract value that they turned down in their Nov. 9 vote.

The flight attendants of American Airlines may wind up getting the bigger pay raises they turned down Nov. 9 after all.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants said Monday that American Airlines chairman and CEO Doug Parker “has expressed a willingness to put wages back” into the union’s new joint collective bargaining agreement.

He’ll meet with the APFA board of directors Thursday to talk about it, the union said in a special hotline Monday.

UPDATE, 2:45 p.m.: American spokesman Paul Flaningan declined to comment on whether AA was prepared to grant the higher value.

Union members on Nov. 9 turned down a tentative contract that would have added $193 million in value to the flight attendant contract. On Saturday, an arbitration board handed down a binding decision that put the value of the contract at $112 million.

Last week, APFA president Laura Glading sent a letter to Parker asking him to talk to the union about giving the flight attendants the full $193 million, despite the attendants’ rejection of the contract.

On Monday, the union posted this message:

“Yesterday, Doug Parker responded to APFA President Laura Glading’s December 8th letter requesting a meeting to discuss the possibility of restoring wages beyond the arbitrated award. APFA is pleased to report that Parker has expressed a willingness to put wages back into our JCBA and has agreed to meet with the APFA Board of Directors and the Joint Negotiating Committee to discuss the details in a Board Briefing being scheduled for Thursday.”

The union and US Airways management had agreed, prior to the US Airways and American merger, to a process on how the AA and US Airways flight attendant contracts would be combined into a joint contract.

That process stated that the joint contract would bring the value of the flight attendants’ contract on part with comparable airlines in the industry standard. The total value going to US Airways flight attendants and to American flight attendants in the joint contract would not be less than in their separate contracts.

That additional value to be in the joint contract was calculated at $112 million.

APFA and AA negotiators in September agreed to a tentative agreement that put the total value at $193 million, or $81 million more than the $112 million minimum required. However, APFA members turned it down by 16 votes, 8,196 to 8,180.

As provided in the 2012 protocol, the contract went to binding arbitration. The union, faced with the task of deciding where to take $82 million out of the contract, reduced the size of pay increases.

By the time of the arbitration hearings Dec. 3-4, the only question as whether flight attendants could have “me-too” clauses that would give them profit sharing or better health insurance plans if other unions secured the same gains. In addition, the union wanted any pay increases retroactive to Dec. 2, the day before the arbitration began.

The board ruled against the union on all three items. The contract went into force on Saturday after the decision, and the new pay scales go into effect Jan. 1.

Flaningan, the AA spokesman, reiterated his comment from Saturday, after the arbitration board decision. “We respect the arbitrators’ decision and will work with the APFA to implement the new joint contract that provides wage increases and other improvements to the existing contract,” he said.

American Airlines and Association of Professional Flight Attendants said Saturday that the board of arbitration issued its final decision that establishes the joint contract covering American and US Airways flight attendants.

“We respect the arbitrators’ decision and will work with the APFA to implement the new joint contract that provides wage increases and other improvements to the existing contract,” American Airlines spokesman Paul Flaningan said following the ruling.

APFA lost all three items in contention in the Dec. 3-4 hearings for the joint collective bargaining agreement, or JCBA.

The board rejected the union’s request for “me-too” clauses that guaranteed that APFA members would get profit sharing and better health coverage if other unions secured those items in their own joint contracts. That was two items.

“In both cases the Panel found that the inclusion of these provisions would push the added value of the JCBA beyond the market-based aggregate of $112 million,” the union said in a hotline message to members Saturday evening.

“A majority of the Panel also rejected APFA’s argument that the new wage rates of the JCBA be retroactive to December 2, 2014. It held that starting the pay increases prior to the effective date of the JCBA would result in its value exceeding the $112 million cap,” the union said.

To recap, a 2012 agreement spelled out a process to establish a joint contract covering flight attendants of the two airlines, which merged Dec. 9, 2013.

That process stated that the carrier and union would try to negotiate a tentative agreement. If they failed or a tentative agreement was rejected by members, they would send the contract to binding arbitration.

The two sides set $112 million as the amount needed to make sure the joint contract would be worth at least as much as the separate AA and US Airways contracts and which would bring the joint contract’s value up to the level of other comparable airlines “in the aggregate.”

American and APFA negotiated a deal that would be worth $81 million more than that, to $193 million annually. However, union members narrowly rejected the proposal Nov. 9.

That rejection meant that the value of a joint contract would revert to that $112 million baseline. APFA, forced to reduce the value of the joint contract by $81 million, proposed shrinking the size of planned pay raises.

So in sum, the contract goes into effect Saturday, new pay rates and other contract provisions go into effect Jan. 1 and the flight attendants, for better or worse, have a joint contract.

That makes them the first of the post-merger American Airlines to unite under a single contract. Pilots are still discussing a joint agreement with American, and other unions are not so far along.

Association of Professional Flight Attendants president Laura Glading has sent a letter to American Airlines chairman and CEO Doug Parker asking for a meeting, with the intent to ask for the full $193 million turned down by flight attendants.

Terry Maxon/DMN

Laura Glading talks to reporters after the Feb. 14, 2013, press conference announcing the US Airways and American Airlines merger.

In specific, the letter simply asks for a meeting between Glading and Parker after arbitrators issue a decision on the flight attendant contract. But in a hotline, APFA said that “The purpose of the meeting will be for APFA to continue to push for the full value of the T/A.”

As it is, they’ll get $112 million in annual value when arbitrators issue their binding decision in the near future. That was set out in a prior agreement before flight attendants narrowly rejected a contract that would have given them $193 million a year more in value, $81 million more than the $112 million.

“I am sure that you agree that the Flight Attendants at the new American, both Legacy American Airlines and Legacy US Airways, have made tremendous sacrifices. Our workgroup has been struggling under substandard wages for far too long,” Glading said in her Monday letter.

“The industry has been in a state of turmoil and turbulence for decades – with the Flight Attendants being thrashed around at every jolt. The professionalism displayed and contributions made through it all have been both extraordinary and invaluable to this company’s bottom line,” she wrote.

“The APFA Board of Directors has made it clear that despite the arbitration award that will be issued, APFA is committed to achieving the restoration of the full $193 million a year in value of the T/A [tentative agreement] that the Company had been prepared to pay. To that end, I am writing on behalf of the Joint Negotiating Committee to ask for a meeting with the Company as soon as we have the arbitration award,” she concluded.

The negotiations were to put the American and US Airways flight attendants under a joint contract, and the $112 million was the amount needed to bring the flight attendants up to industry standards on average without reducing the total value of either the AA or US Airways contracts.

An agreement between APFA leadership and US Airways management prior to last year’s merger provided that American would put in a total of $193 million in added value in a tentative agreement. However, it would go back to the baseline, now set at $112 million, if flight attendants rejected the tentative agreement, and that disputed items in the contract would go to binding arbitration.

The arbitration hearings ended last week after only 1½ days and with only three items in dispute.

Forced to choose where the $81 million would be subtracted from the rejected tentative agreement, APFA negotiators took it out of pay raises. Flight attendants will still get higher pay in the joint contract, just not as much as in the rejected deal.

The arbitration panel is made up of seven members — three impartial arbitrators, two members picked by the union and two members picked by the airline.

“The three arbitrators have called for the two union and two company panel members to meet in an executive session on Saturday, Dec. 13, in Washington, D.C., to discuss a resolution of the issues raised at the hearing,” APFA said on its hotline. “If a decision is reached by the end of this session, the arbitration panel will provide it in writing shortly thereafter.”

We’re not in attendance, but the Association of Professional Flight Attendants has posted a running account of Wednesday’s testimony in the first day of its arbitration hearings with American Airlines.

We reprint it from its Facebook postings, with a few tweaks to identify speakers more clearly and separating out some long paragraphs into single paragraphs. But the wording comes from the APFA.

Arbitrator Richard Bloch is making opening remarks prior to the beginning of the Interest Arbitration in Washington, D.C.

APFA will be presenting first with an opening statement by attorney Jeff Freund from Bredhoff and Kaiser in D.C.

Jeff Freund, APFA’s attorney is presenting APFA’s position, including a historical overview of the merger and the requirement for the arbitration back stop in order for the merger to proceed.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants and American Airlines disagree on three items that the arbiters will have to decide, according to a joint stipulation submitted Wednesday to the arbitration board.

They start out on agreeing that the joint contract will add $112 million a year to the value of the American Airlines and US Airways flight attendant contracts. But the union asked for this:

– If other unions get profit sharing in their joint contracts, APFA will have a “me too” clause that gives its members the same. If so, the pay rates will be reduced by $50 million. That amount was put in a rejected tentative agreement to make up for the lack of profit sharing that APFA doesn’t get and other airlines’ flight attendants do get.

– If the other AA unions get a better deal on their health insurance programs than APFA, APFA will have a “me too” clause that gives its members the same.

– APFA wants higher pay rates, whatever they wind up being, to be retroactive to Tuesday, Dec. 2. Had flight attendants passed the tentative agreement that was rejected Nov. 9 by 50.05 percent of voters, Dec. 2 would have been the date the new pay rates went into effect.

The company says the joint contract and its $112 million ceiling on added value meets the letter of 2012 and 2013 agreements only if there is no “me too” adjustments for profit sharing or health insurance. Those agreements established the protocol for negotiations to get to a joint agreement covering both carriers’ flight attendants.

Also, American wants any pay increases to go into effect the first day of the “bid month” that follows the effective date of the joint collective bargaining agreement. That was what was provided in the tentative agreement.

The hearings began Wednesday in Washington, D.C. We’re looking at an early 2015 decision, assuming of course that the airline and union don’t come to an agreement before then. Otherwise, the arbiters’ decision will be binding on both parties.

On the APFA’s Facebook page, the union gave a running account of the testimony of APFA representatives, including APFA president Laura Glading, and its economist, Dan Akins. Akins finished up shortly before 5 p.m. EST it seems.

Flight attendants line up to protest their contract near American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth.

About three dozen American Airlines flight attendants protested Wednesday morning in front of American Airlines’ Fort Worth headquarters over their contract and its lack of profit sharing.

That description of the event oversimplies things a bit.

Their union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, began arbitration hearings with American management Wednesday in Washington, D.C. The board of arbitration will hear from both the union and airline about what should be in a revised contract, then make a binding decision sometime in early 2015.

The protestors don’t think the union should have agreed to binding arbitration. Many don’t think that union leadership had the legal right to commit the union to binding arbitration. And they think that with American Airlines Group earning record profits, the airline should share more of those profits with flight attendants.

“We are here to let American Airlines management know that the tentative agreement that was rejected was not good enough,” Miami-based flight attendant Trice Johnson said. “And based on the unprecedented profits we’re seeing in the market place, we want our fair share. Sharing is caring.”

The protocol agreed to in 2012 prior to the American Airlines-US Airways merger laid out a process to get a joint agreement covering both labor groups: first, try to get a tentative agreement and, if that failed, submit differences to binding arbitration.

Flight attendants in November rejected a proposed contract. On Wednesday, they started the hearings that would lead to binding arbitration.

Johnson suggested that the process doesn’t have to lead to a contract imposed on flight attendants by binding arbitration.

“As you know from the pilot situation, all negotiations are very fluid. Deadlines can be extended. Talks can be on-going. There is provision in the current protocol agreement for mediation and talks. We’re hoping that talks can continue and an agreement can be reached, with facilitation, with the help of the arbitrator.”

Asked if the contract could be passed without some form of profit sharing, Johnson called that “a hard call. The tentative agreement that was rejected had numerous flaws and problems in it.”

American spokesman Paul Flaningan said airline officials “respect the rights of our unions and their members to voice their opinions. We continue to work through the process to reach joint labor contracts for all of our work groups, including our flight attendants who will realize significant wage increases when the arbitration is complete.”

Airline analyst Hunter Keay of Wolfe Research is predicting that American Airlines and the Allied Pilots Association will come to an agreement on a revised contract by mid-December.

“We think AAL and APA (the union) are taking some time off from negotiations this week after extending a soft negotiating deadline last Friday. AAL management can send negotiations to binding arbitration whenever it wants but we think both AAL and APA view that as undesirable,” Keay said in a Friday report.

“Key issues remain open relating to work rules, but we believe profit sharing is off the table in either an arbitrated or negotiated outcome. Pilots are likely getting a raise of about 15% – the only issue is whether that raise is in January 2015 (negotiated outcome) or January 2016 (arbitration outcome),” he said.

Keay noted that APA leaders don’t have to send a deal out for a vote by members, as opposed to the Association of Professional Flight Attendants contract that required member approval. APFA members turned down their contract by 16 votes out of more than 16,000 votes cast.

“This puts APA leadership in a tough spot. As frustrating as it was for the FA union leadership to see the tentative agreement (TA) rejected, at least the members made that decision themselves,” Keay wrote.

“If APA leadership approves a contract that the majority of its constituents don’t like in a year, APA leadership almost surely changes. Therefore APA is proceeding extra cautiously after having sent back AAL’s initial offer two weeks ago with a counterproposal that requested changes, largely around scope and pay. We think APA leadership will likely poll its members in some form, however, before its board approves a tentative agreement.”

Keay was critical of flight attendants for turning down their deal.

“The FAs sealed their fate earlier this month by oddly rejecting an offer that would have paid them above what they will get in arbitration,” Keay wrote. “We’ve heard that the lack of profit sharing in AAL’s offer led to some unhappiness within the FA rank-and-file, but rejecting the contract and sending the process to arbitration won’t change profit sharing – it will just mean they make ~$80M less per year over the next five years than AAL was offering.”

Meanwhile, APFA has shown its members the pay rates it will be proposing when it opens up the arbitration hearings Wednesday with American, and the rates will be lower in almost all cases than what the flight attendants turned down in the tentative agreement.

The biggest drop will be for flight attendants at the top of the pay scale, with at least 13 years of experience. Their hourly pay rate will be about 6.3 percent less than the rates in the tentative agreement.

The proposed rates in general are higher than current pay rates, however.

The rejected deal would have cost American $193 million a year. In binding arbitration, the annual benefit to flight attendants and cost to American is capped at $112 million, per a prior agreement that some flight attendants want to challenge.

UPDATE, 7 p.m.: The Allied Pilots Association has put out a hotline that confirmed that American Airlines said no to the APA contract proposal, but pulled the “scope” changes that the union had disliked:

“Management removed their Scope-related proposal from the JCBA negotiations. However, management did not agree to any of APA’s new proposed items from last week. While there was no change to previously announced tentative agreements, management indicated that their comprehensive proposal from last week minus their previous Scope ‘ask’ remains unchanged.

“The APA Negotiating Committee indicated that they have questions concerning several of management’s proposed items. Our negotiating team and management are scheduled to meet again tomorrow morning to further address these items.

“The board recessed this evening and will reconvene at 9 a.m. tomorrow to resume discussion of next steps. While your APA leadership is not satisfied with where things stand in bargaining, we will continue discussions with management in an effort to secure additional value that recognizes the critical leadership role of American Airlines pilots.”

“JCBA” refers to “joint collective bargaining agreement.”

Original item: We’re hearing from both the pilot and airline side Tuesday that American Airlines turned down the contract proposal from the Allied Pilots Association and put its original proposal back on the table.

However, AA also pulled its controversial proposal to change its “scope” clause.

The APA board of directors is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the contract negotiations and decide if there’s anything to take to the membership for a vote.

The airline has told union leaders that if APA can’t accept the contract proposal, American is okay with going to the next step, binding arbitration.

The change in the scope clause affected how many regional jets of a certain size could be flown by regional partners. The current APA contract puts airplanes with 30 to 65 seats in that category. American proposed raising it to 70 seats. In face of pilot unhappiness, it dropped that proposal.

Both the airline and APA proposals would give pilots a pay raise that put rates higher than Delta Air Lines, but the APA proposal would give pilots substantially more than the airline proposal. The union put in an extra 10 percent, roughly speaking, because American doesn’t pay profit-sharing while Delta does.

In related news, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants board of directors meets Wednesday at a Grapevine hotel to map out the union’s strategy for its arbitration hearings with American.

APFA members voted to turn down a proposed contract. According to an agreement between the union and the airline, the matter now goes to binding arbitration, with hearings to begin Dec. 3.

The union told members in a Tuesday hotline that APFA leaders and American Airlines representatives sat down Monday with National Mediation Board members to prepare for the arbitration.

In both the pilot and flight attendant cases, the unions and the airlines are trying to combine the separate contracts of US Airways and American. The two carriers merged in December 2013, but the two airlines still have separate contracts for pilots, flight attendants and other employee groups.